Why? Well, the academic year is basically over. I have some thesis defenses and grading, but the wind is very much at my back. All of the things I was worried about have not come to pass (and yes, that should give you a good sense of my typically anxious and pessimistic state of being. For me, “good times” means “nothing really awful is happening right now”!). My department seems safe from the cuts, and my friends kept their jobs. I had my first post-tenure review and it went swimmingly. Research and teaching are both going really well. A senior colleague’s retirement means I get to move into his gigantic corner office (although the loss of that colleague will be huge. He is not being replaced). I am picking out the wall paint today.

The long Maine winter is over and I spent the warm, sunny weekend in our flower gardens and at my sons’ soccer games. I have a new Hospice friend who is an avid mystery and Western reader, and a dear. Everyone in my family is healthy and reasonably happy. I am looking forward to attending RomCon in July [saving RWA for NYC in 2011]. Oh, and I turn 41 today. :)

2. Romantic Times Roundup

I did not attend (and have no plans to, ever), but it has been fun to follow along with the Tweets and posts:

Romantic Times Blog (several posts, scroll down for an amazing shot of an incredibly crowded signing)

Lisabea (author LB Gregg) of Nose in a Book has a fun pic post with shots of Sarah McCarty, Lauren Dane, Tessa Dare and others.

Barbara Vey’s Beyond Her Book blog at PW with lots of pics, including Barbara Taylor Bradford, Harlequin CEO Donna Hayes, Heather Graham as a Mad Hatter that would put Jonny Depp to shame, and some mashed potato martinis, a trend I first heard about maybe 7 or 8 years ago, and that I had hoped would be long gone by now.

Also check out Jane of Dear Author‘s post, which has gotten a two three and counting very heated comments from one of the Mr. Romance contestants who felt dissed by the post and also, apparently, subject to sexual harassment by a “very popular author” and her friends in their suite. A second contestant chimed in ot complain that he was not invited to said orgy.

Provoking an irate reaction seems to be largely the point. GrammarCop, one of several people who seem to exist on Twitter solely to copy-edit others, recently received a beatdown from the actress Kirstie Alley, to whom he had recommended the use of a plural verb form instead of a singular. “Are you high?” Ms. Alley wrote back. “You really just linger around waiting for people to use incorrect grammer? you needs a life.” (One of Ms. Alley’s people said that the actress was too busy to comment for this article.)

For all that science fiction purports to be a genre in which boundless imagination roams the narrative wilds untamed by such dullard concerns as reality and mere mortality, towards the end of my reading spree those words, so often spoken to champion the genre, felt somewhat hollow. Rather than freeing, sci-fi seemed to me a storytelling medium as constricting as any real-world space.

Kindle now has “collections” capacity. Yay! But it is a royal PITA to get it to work. Boo! Karen at Books on the Knob tells you all you need to know.

…every disability is invisible on the internet – meaning, blog posts do not come with a report detailing all the difficulties its author experienced while writing and moderating it. Fighting disablism in the blogosphere, then, necessitates awareness, in the mind of the able-bodied reader or fellow blogger, that the post they are reading may have come from a disabled writer, that this writer may have any number of the problems described above, and that ultimately, a person’s disability may require more attention than the internet does.

What if instead of deriving so much pride from our independence, we took pride in our networks and community memberships? This is not to say that we cannot be proud of both, however, the exaggerated emphasis on independence, emancipation, and liberation in privileged Western feminisms bars important members of our feminist communities from participating fully.

And a wide ranging roundup of links to posts on topics such as education, technology, sex and love, access, and other issues from a disabilities perspective from Diary of A Goldfish.

4. Upcoming on this here blog…

LOTS OF POSTS!!!!

I’ve got reviews of Jo Beverly, Jo Goodman, Barbara Dunlop (Silhouette Desire), and Cheryl St. John (SuperWendy’s blogger bundle) to write. Also part 2 of my summary of the PCA paper on ethical criticism of genre fiction.

I’m pushing the Romance Roots Readalong of Jane Eyre back to Tuesday May 25. Sunday May 23 (in deference to BEA).

I’ll write a post with some observations to get discussion going, and folks should feel free to comment here or write their own post and put a link in the comments. Whatever works for you. I will leave the post open for as long as people want to comment: this will not be a scheduled discussion.

I am thinking of doing some theme weeks this summer, such as a mystery week, a nonfiction week, and a blue collar hero week (for our driving trip in August to a Tigers game). Also, the long awaited Penis WeekMember Week Cucumber Week is coming soon. I promise.

Finally, I now have some time to work on a RRR logo image and decent banner. Hopefully things will look better around here soon.

Big cheers for Jessica’s birthday (you’re still a decade younger than me, my friend) and a corner office. I’m jealous of your end of semester, though: I have two more weeks plus finals still, and I’m dragging.

RomCon is going to be so much fun! And I’m looking forward to Cucumber Week and Jane Eyre.